Lecturas 23.03.2013

In 2012, there were 4,100 registered candidates who died while waiting for a kidney (more than 11 per day), and another 2,700 candidates were removed from the list because they became too sick to survive a kidney transplant operation.

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We know from basic economic principles that congestion, shortages, and surpluses are always caused by a failure to apply market pricing. The market for kidneys is no different in principle than the market for crude oil, Justin Bieber tickets, old coins, soybeans, or unskilled labor. Because the demand for kidneys exceeds the supply by a factor of almost 6 times under the current policy, it seems obvious that the deadly kidney shortage is artificially created because the current “price” of $0.00 for kidneys is way below the market-clearing price. The current system of kidney allocation that relies exclusively on altruism is obviously not working, and thousands of patients needing a kidney transplant will continue to die every year until some type of market pricing is allowed.

Thanks to the revolutionary extraction technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, it’s taken less than five years to reverse the previous 16-year decline in US oil production, and most of that gain has come from increases in shale oil output in Texas and North Dakota. US oil production gradually declined from 7.2 million bpd in 1992 to 5.0 million bpd in 2008, that 16-year decline was completely reversed in less than five years, as domestic oil production went above 7.15 million bpd last week for the first time in more than 20.5 years. That amazing, and unprecedented turnaround in America’s oil production in the last five years happened only because of the breakthrough drilling technologies that have accessed the oceans of oil trapped inside shale rock miles below the ground in Texas and North Dakota that were previously inaccessible with traditional extraction technologies. The impressive increases in US oil production in recent years are a tribute to the efforts of private investors and “petropreneurs” who developed the innovative, revolutionary drilling technologies that were able to access shale oil, and in the process, create an energy revolution in America.